


Mixology Continuing Education

by jeffwik (Portioncontrol)



Series: Remedial Learning! [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 03, multiple timelines warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27453079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Portioncontrol/pseuds/jeffwik
Summary: For Annie's twenty-first birthday they went to a bar, because it was tradition.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger
Series: Remedial Learning! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013475
Comments: 20
Kudos: 54





	1. What She Did

**Author's Note:**

> I never know how to pitch these — am I explaining myself for an obsessive Community fan who knows all the characters’ ages and birthdays off the top of their head, or to a more casual Community fan who merely likes to imagine Annie Edison kissing Jeff Winger and doesn’t really care about the details? For what it’s worth, this story is canon-compliant up until when it takes place (late in season three). Annie’s birthday is in March, because it hasn’t been defined otherwise yet and it’s convenient for this fic, and Jeff was born in late April 1979 because I firmly believe it was 1979 or 1978 until it was retconned in season five to be 1974 for reasons which are left as an exercise for the student as the margins do not permit a full explanation. Anyway, this is set between “Virtual Systems Analysis” and “Basic Lupine Urology.” And everybody deals with stress differently; turns out I write Community fanfic in times of national uncertainty.
> 
> Thanks to Bethany, Amry, and Raj for giving it a once-over!

The evening of Annie Edison’s twenty-first birthday the study group celebrated with a trip to a bar, because it was a tradition. They’d done it for Troy’s twenty-first, the year before, and just because Annie was the only member of the group who hadn’t turned twenty-one yet didn’t mean it wasn’t a tradition that needed to be honored for the second and final time.

It wasn’t even a big deal. They went to bars sometimes. Annie Edison had been drinking for years. About two years, but still, she could say years. She was a drinker. She didn't drink  _ much _ . She drank socially. Now that she was legally of age and could, like, go to liquor stores herself for herself, maybe she would drink more. Red wine. Scotch. Fun drinks that ended in -tini and had little paper umbrellas in them. The sky was, as they said, the limit.

A little over two hours into the evening, Britta was down at the other end of the bar with Troy and Abed; she and Troy were trying to help Abed win the bar trivia machine game thing. A long mirror ran the length of the bar, and it looked like there were two Brittas and two Troys, turned away from one another. Abed wasn’t quite in the frame of the mirror.

Shirley had been making noises about needing to get home to her kids, and Pierce seemed sleepy, but neither had left yet. Jeff had followed the group's center of gravity to the trivia machine but then sidled away and was currently engaged in a conversation with Shirley about some television show Annie had never heard of that had Dustin Hoffman as some kind of horse veterinarian investigating mysterious horse deaths, or something.

In the privacy of the ladies' room, Annie took a deep breath and leaned against the arguably clean wall opposite the mirrors. The girl in the mirror didn't look different than she had yesterday. She was dressed a little more formally, with one of her nicer dresses and a wrap, but not so formally that anybody had noticed. Annie tried to evaluate the girl in the mirror objectively. Not a girl, she told herself. A woman. She was by the standards of her people a woman.

"Annie? Are you all right?"

The girl in the mirror jumped a little. Shirley had followed her in, which Annie should have expected. "I'm fine, thanks Shirley. I just wanted to… I don't know, take a minute."

Shirley's face tightened almost imperceptibly as the older woman silently and swiftly evaluated Annie's level of intoxication. Sober enough, apparently, given the way she nodded. "Okay, sure… you aren't upset about the cake, are you?" The highlight of the pre-meeting, in the study room, had been the ice cream cake Troy and Abed had surprised her with, which was adorned with a little red plastic phone booth and a handful of little plastic people and  _ happy birthday geneva _ in loose blue icing-script. "I told them I thought it was a cute idea."

"It was cute. It was," Annie quickly agreed. "I mean, I'm not as big a fan of  _ Inspector Spacetime _ as they are, but it was nice."

Shirley nodded again, her expression quizzical.

"I was… it's stupid. I was thinking about, um, Jeff." Annie regretted saying it aloud as soon as the words escaped her. Maybe she should have stopped at one margarita. She didn’t feel drunk. Correction: she hadn’t felt drunk until she tried to check herself.

The girl in the mirror twisted her hands together, flustered, embarrassed. "I was thinking I could… I'm an adult now, but…" She shook her head again. "It's stupid."

Annie had expected Shirley to respond with a small scowl and a harsh tone, but instead the older woman smiled. "Well, we're all allowed to be stupid sometimes."

The girl in the mirror was visibly nonplussed.

"You kids are all always making googly-eyes at each other. You and Jeff, Jeff and Britta, Britta and Troy, Troy and Abed, Abed and you, you're a damn love pentacle summoning horny demons, is what it sometimes seems like." Shirley sighed. "And you know, Jeff and I are about the same age."

"Aren't you three years older—"

"Two and a half!" For a moment Shirley's tone had the hard edge Annie had been expecting. But then she softened again. "But he's basically emotionally sixteen… I tell you, I'd feel left out except I never want to revisit being single again."

Annie nodded, unsure where Shirley was going with this. She might have tried to pull away but Shirley was between Annie and the exit.

"Time was, I used to think, oh, Jeff and Britta, there's a sullen white boy and a sullen white girl and they seem to like each other as friends, which is important, and then…" She shook her head. "I thought Jeff and Britta should get together. And you I wanted to see with Warren."

"Who?"

"Exactly." Shirley glanced heavenward. "He was in Chang's Spanish class, and the anthropology class. White boy, sat in the back, had a massive crush on you?"

Annie chuckled nervously. "Nobody ever had a massive crush on me..."

"I thought you'd be cute together. I suppose. You try to come up with ways to entertain yourself. Lord knows I try. You want to have some fun with Jeff, you have yourself some fun. You deserve fun. When I was your age I was already pregnant with Jordan. He's a good boy, I love him so much…" Shirley suddenly started to tear up.

Annie moved to comfort her, hugging the older woman. "Shirley? Are you okay? What's the matter?"

"I'm very drunk, Annie," Shirley said between sniffles. "I've already called a cab. This is the most I've drunk since we met. I love you, too. Not the same way I love Jordan. Well, kind of…"

"It's okay, Shirley," Annie assured her. "It's okay."

* * *

By the time Annie finished helping Shirley into her cab, Pierce had already left. Britta and Troy were having an animated discussion about something, it wasn't clear what, and next to them Abed had moved from the bar trivia machine to the video poker machine. Jeff was…

Annie scanned the bar. Had Jeff left, too? Apparently. She stood by the door for a moment, more miffed than she wanted to admit. She had just about made up her mind not to go sit by Abed and instead just head home. Declare the evening a victory, she wasn't going to 'have fun' with Jeff but that was fine… when she felt a hand clap her on the shoulder. She jumped.

"Hey, kiddo, were you leaving?" Jeff asked her. He'd approached from behind like some kind of leaving-the-men's-room ninja. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the girl in the mirror jump. Next to the man looming over her she looked tiny and underage. “Sorry,” Jeff continued, “didn’t mean to startle you.”

"I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Um, yeah…" Annie's will to leave the bar evaporated under the red heat of Jeff's very mildly expressed disappointment. 

Seeing her waver, Jeff grinned. “How about one more drink before you go? I’ll buy. It can be your birthday present. I didn’t get you anything else.” Nobody had. Annie hadn’t been disappointed, because she hadn’t expected anything. Nobody else got presents from the group on their birthdays either. They just didn’t do that, collectively. She hadn't been secretly hoping for something more, because that would have been silly.

“Okay, but is that going to create a precedent where I have to buy you a drink on your birthday?” Annie hoped she sounded playful, rather than hopeful. She’d had enough to drink already but one more would hurt.

He shrugged. “Maybe it’ll create a precedent under which you  _ get _ to buy me a drink on my birthday. There’s really only one way to be sure.”

So they went to the bar, and Jeff ordered two scotches from the long-haired, bearded bartender, and they each took one, and when she held hers out he rolled his eyes and clinked his to it, and then they each took a sip and  _ ugh _ scotch still tasted awful. She tried not to make a face. Behind the bar, the girl in the mirror  _ almost _ succeeded and the man looming over her definitely noticed.

“You want something else?” Jeff asked her. “Another margarita, maybe?”

“No, no, that’s okay.” Annie took another sip of the scotch.  _ Ugh _ scotch. “It’s an acquired taste, right? Like coffee. When I was a little kid I hated coffee, but in sixth grade—“

“You started drinking coffee in sixth grade?” Jeff sounded incredulous.

“Just one cup in the morning.” Annie raised her glass towards her lips, tried to make herself take a third sip of the scotch, failed, lowered it again. “Mom had this automatic coffee maker so when we woke up there it was… When did you start drinking coffee? Second year of the law school you didn’t go to?”

“I dunno. Not grade school. Listen, there’s no point in wasting good scotch…” Jeff plucked her glass out of her hand and emptied it into his own. “You were very clearly not enjoying that. It pained me to watch. I’ll buy you something else, whatever you want.”

Annie tried to summon indignation but it didn’t come. Instead she just felt relieved. “Okay. Okay. Um, would you get me an appletini?”

“An appletini?” He sounded shocked she would even suggest such a thing. “No, I’m not going to get you an appletini.”

She considered biting her lip and widening her eyes and saying  _ please _ , but no, she was a grown-up now. The girl — the  _ woman _ in the mirror was the huge man’s equal, after all, she didn’t need to wheedle and beg him. “Fine,” she said carelessly, flipping her hair back and looking away. “Is a screwdriver acceptable?”

He grimaced, like he regretted not just letting her choke down the scotch. “Sure, whatever you want. Just, an appletini, you know? You might as well order a banana daiquiri.”

“Ooh, I’ve never had a banana daiquiri,” Annie said, turning back to look up at him. “Are they good? I’ll try that.”

He chuckled weakly. “I would be shocked if Jethro Tull over there has the fixings, either for a banana daiquiri or a not-shitty appletini.” Jeff indicated the bartender with a quick tilt of his head. “Sorry I mentioned it. Listen, on my birthday we’ll find a tiki bar or a TGIFriday’s or whatever and you can order us both banana daiquiris, okay?”

She smiled at that. “Okay. Although, who knows, maybe by then I’ll have developed a taste for whiskey. Yummy dirt flavor. Liquor for grown-ups like myself.”

He seemed slightly relieved, like he’d realized he’d stepped in it with the appletini thing and was glad to have evaded the minefield. “So, changing the subject, hey, you’ve been living with Troy and Abed for almost four months now.”

“I have. It’s been great. No regrets.”

“That’s not what you were texting me at one AM…”

“Yes, yes, but that was just the one time!” Annie scoffed. “One time they decided midnight was the time to  _ start _ a rave in our living room. Which is also their bedroom, yes, but couldn’t they have just used the dreamatorium? It’s soundproofed for a reason!”

Jeff raised an eyebrow. “It is?”

“Yes. Not well. I tried.” Annie’s bedroom was on the opposite side of the apartment from the dreamatorium, at least. “But mostly it’s been great. You know the guys, they’re great.”

“We used to hang out more,” Jeff said reflectively. “Me and Troy and Abed, I mean. When they moved in together they shifted their shenanigans to off-campus.”

“Are you disappointed?” Annie was charmed. “Aw, you miss them? We should have you over more. Britta’s over all the time, you know she lives five minutes away and she says her place has too many cats to study in.”

Jeff chuckled. “I see enough of you kids,” he said, looking away.

“Kids? Jeffrey Winger.” She admonished the back of his head. “Need I remind you that I am twenty-one years old now? Fully adult. Entirely grown-up. Ripe and ready,” she said, and immediately regretted it. “Mature,” she added, trying to cover.

“Oh, I know,” Jeff said, a little too quickly.

There was a few seconds of awkward silence. Annie found herself staring at the couple in the mirror. The man and the woman. The man was looking off to the side, away from the woman in the mirror, towards a mute television with a car commercial on it. Then she looked away as he glanced her way, and then the glance became a look, or a stare, and anyway the reflection of Jeff was looking at her with… some kind of expression and she was kind of looking nowhere in particular, maybe down towards Troy and Abed and Britta, and pretending not to notice him looking at her.

Suddenly she felt drunk, hyper-aware that the alcohol in her system was depressing her inhibitions and slowing her reaction time. And Jeff was yummy, which was a word she would never use to describe him sober. And she’d just had a personal breakthrough about how Jeff being yummy wasn’t a big deal, she wasn’t secretly in love with him, she just wanted to be wanted, and still, he was right there, smiling at her…

Annie realized she and Jeff were making eye contact again. When did that happen? Definitely she’d had too much to drink. She should go home before she did something stupid.

Instead she scooted slightly towards him on her barstool, and broke eye contact so she could rest her head on his shoulder. He probably looked surprised but she’d closed her eyes. “You should come over more,” she said then. “I’d like to see more of you. If you’re waiting for an invitation, this is me inviting you…”

He put his arm around her, slipping it out from between them so she could snuggle up into him. Maybe not “so” she could do that, but she did it a little, anyway.

“Annie,” he murmured, almost too quiet for her to hear.

“Would you like to go now?” she asked him, barely aware she was going to speak before the words were slipping out. But then there was no stopping them. “Or, you know, Troy and Abed and probably Britta are going to relocate to our living room sometime, we could go to your place. Hang out for a while.”


	2. What He Wanted to Do

She felt Jeff stir. “Tempting,” he said after a long pause.

“That’s me,” Annie replied, eyes still closed. “I’m a temptress.”

“Yeah, but, as much as… you’re about as drunk as I’ve ever seen you.”

“I’ve had two sips of scotch!”

“And, what, two margaritas before that?”

“When we got here. Hours ago.” Actually she wasn’t sure how long ago she’d finished the second margarita. Half an hour? Twenty minutes? Forty-five? “And besides, I’m just asking you to take me home and hang out. We’ll sit on your couch and watch some bad television until you’ve decided I’ve sobered up enough to drive me home. Or whatever…” She trailed off, still snuggled against him. One of her hands had found his chest and was lightly touching him.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he said after another pause.

“Jeff. I’m an adult.” She sat up and turned to look him in the eye — his expression was surprisingly soft, tender even. His eyes a little wide, his mouth a little open, his lips… “I’m an adult,” she repeated after a momentary lapse. “And, yes, I’m kind of slightly drunk, but I’m not so drunk that I couldn’t pay my electric bill, or follow the plot of an episode of _the Mentalist_ , or anything else… anything else… adults do.”

He smiled. “Be that as it may…”

“So I’m sorry, I’m going to need you to respect my autonomy,” she continued solemnly. Then she turned away and made eye contact with the woman in the mirror. The man next to her was trying not to smile. Good for you, woman in the mirror.

She cleared her throat. “Either take me back to your place so I can lay on your couch and watch television, or else buy me an appletini like I asked for.”

“Well, you definitely shouldn’t have another drink at this point.”

* * *

So Jeff settled up at the bar while Annie told Troy that Jeff was giving her a ride home, or maybe to his place, don’t wait up. If Troy was nonplussed he was quickly distracted by Britta warning Annie not to accept car rides from strange men and then Troy and Britta were laughingly arguing about whether or not Jeff was strange.

When they got in Jeff’s car she was very briefly worried that she would need to throw up or something from the motion, but she was fine. Outside the bar, away from the scotch and tequila, out in the night air, she felt a hundred percent more sober. Jeff told her a story about how he’d scammed his way into taking the bar exam that she wasn’t sure was true (it involved a whole series of suspicious coincidences) but it was funny, and they laughed and then they were at his place.

If he was disappointed that Annie didn’t pass out on the way there, that instead she was awake and alert, he definitely didn’t show it. “One episode and then I’ll drive you home.” He did not sound especially adamant. 

She kicked her shoes off and started browsing Netflix from his couch. “Did you have a show in mind?” she asked him as he sat down next to her, his arm casually tossed over the back of the sofa. “Ehh, it doesn’t matter, you’re getting _Dexter_.”

“You’re the birthday girl,” he said with feigned resignation.

“I am the birthday woman.”

“Birthday woman.”

“So I get to pick. You do not get to pick. You are not the birthday boy.”

“I wouldn’t be the birthday man?”

She affectionately tapped his arm in a gesture only faintly reminiscent of slugging him. “We can tell you are not the birthday boy because we are not drinking banana daiquiris together in a tiki bar.”

“Oh, you’re going to hold me to that?” He was smiling, now.

She grinned back at him. “Yeah, obviously...”

Then the episode was starting and she wrenched her attention away from him and onto his television screen. About twenty minutes in she felt his arm around her and she responded by very deliberately snuggling up against him, almost climbing on him so that their faces would be fairly close together in case that became needful for any reason whatsoever.

“So you’ve sobered up, right?” he asked, so quietly she could barely hear him from inches away.

“Yeah,” she said, turning to smile at him, and then he kissed her.

* * *

After the second episode of _Dexter_ ended (not that Annie could have told you a thing about it) Jeff disentangled from her a little and offered again to drive her home. It was tempting to insist that she sleep on his couch instead, and then maneuver her way into sharing his bed (just for some innocent cuddling). But she didn’t want him to bolt so she needed to move gently, she knew, and he’d already let her talk him into more than she’d expected when she woke up that morning.

When she got home it was past midnight and of course the boys were still up watching something with kickboxing while Britta dozed on the sofa. They didn’t ask about how she’d left the bar before them but gotten home an hour later, and she didn’t tell them anything. Maybe her giddy expression said enough.


	3. What He Told Himself Afterwards He Should Have Done

“Okay, kiddo,” he said with a slight chuckle. “If you need a ride home, I can give you a lift.”

“Not to your place?” She could hear the disappointment in her voice. “I’d make it worth your while. Scrub your toilet for you,” she said, because it was the first thing that came into her head.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you really don’t want to be alone, I can stay with you until Troy and Abed get home,” he offered. “Make you some grade-school coffee.”

“I’m not really in a coffee frame of mind.” She opened her eyes and sat up. “You don’t want to…?”

He interrupted her, which was great, because she wasn’t sure she had a good way to finish that sentence. “Not really about ‘wanting.’ Listen, Annie, there’s this thing we’ve been dancing around…”

“Uh huh?” She felt like she was sinking. Too much to drink, definitely. 

“And this isn’t the best time to talk about it, but there’s never been a good time,” he continued. “But you and me, you said it was a will-they-might-they thing once…”

Annie sniffed. Her cheeks were getting hot. The quicker this ended the better. “And we won’t, and might not, I mean, will not. Because you’re not… you don’t like me…” She struggled to find the way to say it.

He interrupted her, though, before she could complete the thought. “What? No,” he said with surprising earnestness. “You—I—you’re great. You’re very important to me. I like you a lot. I only want the best for you. Now and for the rest of your life, as you continue to grow and...”

“I just turned twenty-one, I’m not graduating kindergarten.” Her voice sounded cold, even though Annie felt hot.

“Right, see, exactly. I’ve been infantilizing you all evening,” he countered. “Calling you kiddo, not letting you pick an appletini… Grousing that your mother lets you drink coffee.”

“She doesn’t ‘let’ me, Jeff, I’ve barely spoken to her in the last three years. I’ve told you before, you’re not infantilizing me, you’re just refusing to see me for who I am. Well, stop it.” She straightened up a little, to glare at him more effectively. “Get over yourself, Buddy the Elf!”

He didn’t meet her gaze. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried, but, you know, you just referenced a movie that you saw in, what, sixth grade? Probably while hopped up on a triple espresso, and I’ve never seen it because in 2004 or whatever I was busy figuring out how to fake my way into the bar exam because I’d already failed out of college and instead of telling  _ my _ mother the truth I told her I was going to law school! Because I lie to people instead of telling them the truth, when it makes me feel better!” His voice had gotten steadily more intense, and the last part was almost loud enough for other people in the bar to hear, but not quite.

“Yeah, but you—“ She broke off to watch him realize he was getting noisy, and calm himself down. “But you have moved on from that. You talked your way into being a lawyer and then when that guy sold you out you made a deal and now you’re more than halfway towards being a lawyer again. You can get better.”

“I… you’re right.” He sighed. “But where I was going with that was that when I was the age you are now, you were seeing  _ Elf _ in theaters with your fellow middle schoolers.”

Annie frowned. “I did not have going-to-movies-together friends in middle school. Also, for the record, _Elf_ came out when I was in seventh grade. So, 2003.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, you’re saying you’re too old for me, which is… ridiculous. Okay, sure, it would have been a deal-breaker in 2003. But now? And give it another few years and nobody would even bat an eye.” Her head swam as she tried to think. She’d never experienced head-swimming before but that was definitely what it was. Jeff Winger was making her head swim. Jeff Winger and tequila.

“Annie,” he said after a moment. “I’ve been struggling with it all evening. For a while now. Quite a while. If I stop thinking of you as a kid… it’d be bad, long term.”

She stopped trying to compose an argument and just started talking. “I don’t accept that premise and I think I should be the one who gets the final say. I’m not saying let’s get married, I’m saying, let’s see what happens. Maybe we would kiss and then we would start laughing because it’s like kissing your sister and all the romantic tension just evaporates, poof, and we’re both a little sadder and wiser.”

“It doesn’t…” He shook his head. “That’s not what would happen. I would try to be your boyfriend and I would suck at it.”

She threw up her hands. “How do you know that? Maybe I just want to use your body for my pleasure and then toss you aside like a dirty paper towel.”

“I doubt that. Maybe. I don’t know. But I know me. I would be terrible. Every time I’ve tried it, in the past, it’s ended with her hating me. I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I’d never hate you! You’re just assigning me emotions now?”

“You and all our friends. If I had to choose between losing you and losing everybody else… but that’s not the situation. They would all go with you. Except maybe Pierce. Maybe.”

“You can keep Pierce,” she said, trying to make a joke out of it. When he just shrugged, she tried again. “I seem to remember two people in the study group hooking up before. In secret. For months, right?” It felt like a mistake, bringing that up, but still, there it was.

He looked mildly stung. “You and me, it’s… it’s not like me and Britta. It never was.”

“It could be,” Annie said. She glanced at the girl in the mirror, whose body language made it clear she was on the losing side of an argument. “We could just see what happens. I can handle it.”

“I know. But I can’t.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry this is what it is. If I’d been honest with you before now… This is me being honest. I can’t. I would love to. But I can’t. I would look in the mirror and see a monster. And then maybe some day would come when you would look at me and see a monster. And there’s nothing in the world I want more than than for  _ that  _ to never happen. I can’t risk it.”

Annie blinked several times, trying to process this. It was far from the first time Jeff had rejected her, of course. It was… maybe the third time? Fourth? Fifth? Somewhere in there.

So she didn’t really feel surprised, just a little disappointed. She wasn’t in love with Jeff Winger. He could be sweet sometimes, and he’d just been more honest with her than she could immediately remember him ever being, before, but…

“Okay then. I mean, I’m not shocked, I guess. And you’re not a monster. You’re my friend and I’m glad we’re friends. But if you can’t make yourself try, I can’t make you want to make yourself… you know what I mean.” She took a breath, prepared to cover for her tears, but they didn’t come. “And let’s be totally clear: you just cost yourself a free birthday banana daiquiri, buster,” she told him, and flipped her hair as she walked down the bar towards Troy and Abed and Britta. 


	4. What He Did

There was a long enough pause that Annie thought maybe he hadn't heard her. Or that he'd answered her and she'd missed it somehow.

But then Jeff cleared his throat, and shifted in his seat such that she had to un-snuggle from his side. "If you're ready to go I shouldn't order you that screwdriver."

Annie blinked. "No," she said slowly. "I guess not."

The man in the mirror was angled slightly away from the woman, looking back towards the television. "You can still buy me a banana daiquiri next month, if you want."

"That's very generous of you." She bit her lip. "So was that a no on heading back to your place? Or my place."

"Sure." He turned to face her then, smiling. "I can give you a ride home if you don't want to wait for the guys," he said. "Just give me a minute to finish my drink." He glanced down, perhaps remembering he'd made it a double by stealing most of hers. "Maybe not… how about I get you a cab? I'll pay, which is a more practical birthday gift than a cocktail."

"Am I still on the hook for tiki drinks, then?" Not waiting for his answer Annie set her jaw. "Jeff!"

He looked baffled. "I think tiki drinks remain, as they have always been, optional."

"Fine, yes, enough with the tiki drinks." She waved the idea away, trying to break past.

"You just—"

He broke off when she let out a kind of irritated yelp. "I was saying..." Annie pressed on doggedly. "I was just inviting you back to my place—"

Jeff glanced at his watch. "It's a little late to plan to start watching something, but I'm sure Abed has something locked and loaded for a movie night, if that what you—"

"Jeff!" Annie cried again. "I don't—-you know what? Never mind. Never mind!" She shut up before she said something she regretted, or worse, shouted something she regretted. Instead Annie stormed over to Troy and Britta and Abed, joined their conversation. and kept her back to Jeff for as long as she could make herself.

When she finally did turn around to check, he was gone. There was a text from him on her phone she'd missed, saying happy birthday and he'd see her around and not quite apologizing for anything, presumably because he wasn't aware of anything he needed to apologize for.

* * *

That was Friday night. The group didn't have anything social planned for the rest of the weekend, so the next time she saw him was Monday morning. She sidled up to his locker with a whole little speech planned. She'd gone over it in her head and decided that she'd had too much to drink and she'd imagined that their conversation had been a lot more flirty than it had actually been, and that her suggestion that they find someplace private and make out simply hadn't registered with Jeff as being that. Because they were friends, and that was something friends didn't do, so he'd assumed she meant something else.

He grinned when he saw her and she immediately abandoned her planned remarks. No point in making things awkward, especially not over a failed seduction attempt that he hadn't even rejected, it had just… bounced off.

She was not in love with Jeff Winger, she didn't pine for Jeff Winger, she wasn't even on Jeff Winger's radar as a viable romantic partner even for a quick and meaningless little liaison. That was the way it was, that was how it was going to be, and there was no point trying to make it otherwise.

She did remind him about their daiquiri plans for his birthday next month, though.


End file.
